Lantana Planning To Fight Plant Site

LANTANA — An anxious Town Council Wednesday urged residents to pack a Palm Beach County Planning Commission meeting Friday to fight a trash transfer station proposed a minute away from town.

Council members also decided to study annexing the proposed trash transfer site on the southwest corner of Interstate 95 and Lantana Road in their latest attempt to block the station. County commissioners, sitting as the Zoning Board, are set to vote on its location Dec. 30.

``I would like to see the chambers filled up,`` Vice Mayor Marie Selby told council members and 16 residents at a council meeting Wednesday. She told the audience to drive friends to Friday`s Planning Commission meeting and to the County Commission meeting Dec. 30.

``If we were a condo, we would have power,`` said Joe Palermo, a Lantana developer and real estate agent.

Council member Dave Adams Wednesday launched a look into annexing the proposed site, which would draw trucks through Lantana residential neighborhoods, as a last-ditch effort to keep the plant away. Council members will ask Greenacres City attorney Preston Mighdoll to discuss annexation procedure at a meeting Monday.

``The only way I can see to circumvent the plant is annexation,`` Adams said. ``Right now, no one cares (if the plant is here). Lake Worth doesn`t care. The county doesn`t care. We`ve got to do something about it ourselves.``

Adams and Mayor Bob McDonald Tuesday tried to convince Lake Worth city commissioners to deny the county Solid Waste Authority`s request for sewer connections to the proposed transfer site.

A denial could force the county to look somewhere else, council members reasoned, but some Lake Worth commissioners were annoyed with the request.

In other business:

(BU) All carry-out liquor stores could be in for some policy changes now that council members are rewriting the 35-year-old alcoholic beverages chapter of the city code. Council member Bill Fulton said Wednesday the city should scrutinize policies for all establishments selling alcohol, not just bars, which would begin closing at 2 a.m. Oct. 1 if a new ordinance is approved at two more council meetings.

(BU) Renovation efforts for the town`s three ball felds are creeping along, but the upcoming season probably is off for 400 little leaguers. Council members said that they must go through the normal bidding process, which would cut into the season by three months, to fix up the fields because the town would be liable for accidents if residents pitched in to fix them.